hypnosec writes: Having procured permission from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit managed to disrupt more than 500 different strains of malware in a bid to slow down the threats posed by the Nitol botnet. Microsoft, through an operation codenamed b70 [PDF], discovered that Chinese retailers were involved in selling of computers with pirated version of Windows loaded with malware. Microsoft believes that the malware could have entered the supply chain at any point for the simple reason that a computer travels among companies that transport and resell the computer. The Windows 8 maker carried out a study [PDF] which was focused on the Nitol botnet through which it found that nearly 20 per cent of the all the PCs that were purchased through unsecure Chinese supply chain were infected with malware.